On 2nd and 3rd of February, a number of events took place under II Inter-University Workshop with international participation «The World of English: Theory and Practice», organized by the Department of the English Language, Penza State University. The first day of the methodological workshop was based in PSU.

The workshop participants were greeted by the honorary guest S.M. Vasin, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Vice-Dean for International Affairs. In his welcoming speech he emphasized the importance of learning foreign languages in the modern world and, as a consequence, the importance of organizing the workshop, which contributes to popularizing English at University and to professional growth of the teachers.

T.V. Dubrovskaya, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Head of the English Language Department, pointed out that the event is aimed at exchanging experience and ideas in English teaching and is held for the second time as it was particularly successful in 2016.

The main speaker at the workshop was Heather Mello, a representative of the English Language Office under the USA Embassy, who is living and working in Saransk. Her presentations were devoted to the students’ knowledge assessment and to the use of electronic platforms for this purpose. The participants had an opportunity to have a discussion in English on the important issues of teaching English methods and to ask questions to the guest.

Kulikova I.V., Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Head of Department “Foreign Languages”, Penza State Technological University, wrote about the PSU workshop: “I would like to express my gratitude to the English Language Department for organizing the workshop with Heather Mello, a methodologist from the USA. It was very useful to learn the specific features of managing learning courses which exist in the US universities, with principles and procedures of assessing the efficiency of teachers’ work. The round-table discussion allowed the participants to exchange their opinions and to compare their own experience with the experience of Russian and international colleagues”.

The second part of the workshop was held beyond the University walls – at Penza Social and Pedagogical College and at linguistic school no.6. English teachers from the educational centre “Britain”, representatives of 11 secondary vocational education institutions of Penza and the Penza Region, about 100 school teachers took part in the workshop. All of them emphasized the practical value of the workshop, the opportunity to communicate with a native speaker, informative and interesting presentation of the material on modern English teaching technologies. All the workshop participants from the three platforms were awarded certificates.